From Star Trek to Siri: How the Machine-Reading Revolution will dictate the future

(CNN) — When IBM’s Watson system defeated the human champion on “Jeopardy!” in February 2011, it surprised the world with its unprecedented command of a vast array of facts, puns, and clever questions.

But how will that feat change our lives over the next decade? What does it mean for the future of intelligent machines?

Watson accumulated its wide-ranging knowledge by “reading” the equivalent of millions of books, foreshadowing a revolution in how computers acquire, analyze, and create knowledge.

Given the explosive volume of text available to anyone today in the form of web pages, articles, tweets and more, automatic machine reading is a critical part of technology’s future.

Here are five ways we predict the Machine-Reading Revolution will change your life in the coming decade: